The following is a guest post from Craig McAllister of Integrated Virtual Networks (IVN). Craig discusses the effectiveness of realistic (vs. graphical) avatars and introduces us to Silhouette, technology that his company has developed to render realistic avatars within a 3D virtual world. Be sure to check out the video demo (below), as I think this could be a game changer.

Introduction

To many people, today’s avatars represent elaborate animations. Recently, however, much fanfare has been made about new technologies enabling animated avatars to mimic a wide range of users’ facial expressions. If you smile, your avatar smiles with you. If you frown, your avatar frowns. This development allegedly translates into greater realism. But is this realism “real” enough? If the objective is to make an avatar truly “real”, why not have it actually be real?

Animated Avatars

Certainly there exists specific segments of the Virtual world population for whom animated avatars are preferred. These groups might include children under 10; teenaged gamers; and non-gaming adults in virtual worlds like Second life. In each of these examples, customization, fantasy, and/or anonymity take precedence over true realism.

Realistic Avatars

There are, however, a number of possible virtual world environments where users are likely to be interested in seeing avatars that are as realistic as possible. In fact, wouldn’t a live streaming video avatar of an actual person be a viable alternative to the currently available animations? This technology would allow for real time, face-to-face meetings in virtual worlds. People could actually see each other.

Realistic Avatars for Online Dating

One example of a real need for this technology is in the area of virtual world dating. As Violetta Krawczyk-Wasilewska and Andrew Ross said in their paper entitled “Matchmaking Through Avatars: Social Aspects of Online Dating”, “Once you have experienced the virtual delights of avatar dating in an online venue, taking that last fateful step and going for a real, physical, face-to-face meeting with your avatar date can only be a let-down.”

Talk about a blind date! How could you even be certain of the gender of the animated avatar you were dating, let alone know what that person actually looks like in the real world?

Realistic Avatars for Online Job Interviews

Another good example of the value of realistic avatars would be virtual world job interviews. Recently, at a state government job fair in Second life, an applicant “came to the job fair as a” tiny cat with a red bow tie on.” How can anyone really know for sure whom they are actually talking to? For all you know, you could be interviewing some kid’s Dad!

How about social networking? Imagine virtually attending your 10th high school reunion, and being able to see your fellow classmates face-to-face (how did that cute girl/guy who used to sit next to you turn out?) Instead of experiencing an animated depiction fixing you with a facsimile smile, you could see your classmates actually laughing. The experience using a live streaming video avatar would be totally different, and potentially a lot more satisfying.

Realistic Avatars for Distance Learning

Distance learning and virtual campuses are other areas with enormous potential. Teachers and students could see each others’ actual faces in the virtual world, thereby facilitating a much richer and personally interactive learning experience.

Imagine playing online poker with a table full of animated avatars. There is no way to read your opponents’ “tells” that you would otherwise pick up in a face-to-face situation. Given that the human face is capable of making over 50,000 different individual expressions, real time avatars clearly provide the advantage in such a nuanced environment. Otherwise, everyone will have their avatars set to “poker face”. So much for nuance.

With Silhouette, each user in a virtual world is able to see and be seen as a live streaming video avatar at real time frame rates, along with synchronized audio. Silhouette works with a single high-speed web camera to extract a user’s video image from the user’s actual environment, without the need for a monochromatic (e.g. blue or green screen) background. Silhouette could be used for all those virtual world situations where “real” actually needs to be real.

You can see the direction IVN is going with its live video avatar software by looking at its rough in-house “proof of concept” video which was done completely in-world:

As indicated in the beginning of this post, live video avatars will not be for everyone, but once the technology is fully developed, it could bring a needed dose of reality to virtual worlds.

The Internet Dating industry has a conference called iDate. This year, iDate 2009 is scheduled for Los Angeles, London and Miami. The event is billed as “the largest conference that covers the business management for the Internet Dating and Social Networking Industries.” iDate has launched a virtual conference to complement their physical events [see press release].

Perhaps at the iDate 2009 events, industry players can collaborate on leveraging virtual event platforms to faciliate online matchmaking. What are some of the challenges of online matchmaking today?

The game changer: webcams– require all participants to utilize a webcam. Without one, you truly won’t know who’s on the other end of a chat window. With one, you’ll be able to discover whether the picture (that attracted your attention) matches up with the individual who uploaded it. And, you’re able to interact via spoken word to other attendees – and see their facial expressions.

Global access, from home – the event would have elements of a physical meet-up, but attendees could participate from anywhere. That being said, regionalized virtual events may be necessary, to facilitate match making of individuals within close geographic proximity.

Profile matchmaking – some virtual event platforms already have this feature – for online dating, this is the secret sauce that differentiates one service over another. For an eHarmony, perhaps they integrate their sophisticated algorithms into the event platform, so that attendees can be paired up in the virtual event like they are on eHarmony.com.

Post-event data portal – after the event, participants can login to a personalized web-based portal, where they can review all the interactions they had with other attendees. If you met over 20 people online, you might need such a feature to remember whom you really liked!

Find mates by observing– topical chat rooms could be organized (e.g. Music, Sports, Food, Travel), where attendees could congregate to chat about their hobbies and interests. The chat need not be restricted to text – some platforms support multi-webcam rooms, where participants can speak and see the other participants. By observing, one might find someone interesting/attractive – and later on, you can connect with that person privately (e.g. in a 1-on-1 chat).

For the online matchmaking service providers, virtual events provide a nice up-sell opportunity to complement subscription-based revenue. To avoid canibalization of the subscription business, perhaps you only allow access to the virtual event for existing subscribers.

The virtual events could also serve to generate new subscriptions – imagine tying the event into Facebook’s ~175MM active users via Facebook Connect. Attendees could see which of their Facebook friends are in the event – and, post updates back to their Wall, driving new users into the event (and hence, new subscriptions to your service).